Delivering Industry Expert Led Pre-Award Grant Readiness, Opportunity Research and Application
We prepare an overall organizational and strategic profile that will help you understand your organization’s needs, priorities and capacity. With that assessment, we can assist you in navigating the vast opportunities federal grants provide and identify the funding which benefits your organization and community the most. Our pre-award team can provide you with professional grant application writing and donor inquiry response coaching, helping you pave the way to more funding opportunities.
Readying Your Organization for Government and Foundation Grants
Grant dollars coming from the government have more strings attached compared to those that come from private donations, and in many cases, foundation grants defer to federal guidance. As a result, organizations must stay compliant with extensive rules and regulations stipulated by government entity donors, often under enormous public pressure of transparency, and faced with limited time and resources.
Many businesses may not be adequately structured and staffed to manage and report on grants in compliance with donor requirements. Cherry Bekaert performs grant ready pre- to post-award transition services where we directly collaborate with leadership to design a grant management function within your organization to help you manage government and foundation grants with confidence.
Performing Grant Compliance and Operational Support
Whether your organization is receiving its first grant or already has a long history of administering grant funding, compliance status is a vital element of the grant lifecycle.
We can help take the regulatory pressure off by performing grant expenditure allowability evaluations, grant specific procurement process reviews, as well as best-practice based recipient, subrecipient, and contractor monitoring and evaluation, so control and compliance gaps are identified and mitigated before auditors or donors come knocking on your door. In addition, we deliver internal control evaluations to mitigate risks and to minimize single audit findings. If you need a variety of support services on an on-going basis, we provide a full range of grant management services that can be customized to meet your needs.
Navigating Grant Lifecycle Enterprise Resource Planning Implementation
Grants jobs requiring manual data entry and reporting are no longer attracting qualified candidates. A study has shown that workload and motivation are among the top eight reasons for staff departure. The extra workload created by lack of automation is hurting staff motivation and contributes to the high turnover in this field.
Cherry Bekaert is positioned to solve this challenge by partnering with AmpliFund, an end-to-end grants management software solution. With AmpliFund, we can provide:
- Full dashboard and transaction level access for individual grant and departmental level data
- A centralized filing and record keeping structure fully in compliance with audit requirements
- Automated internal workflow and alert notifications to enhance collaboration and track deadlines
- A customized financial report design to reduce manual efforts and increase accuracy
Providing Full Cycle Bridge-the-Gap Grant Manager Program
About three-quarters of CPAs are now at or near retirement age, and the pipeline looks thin as the percentage of new workforce entering this field trends downwards. Many organizations are seeing decades of institutional knowledge walk out the door without sufficient talent to replace lost resources.
Cherry Bekaert provides a unique program designed to assist clients experiencing staff transitions in the grants or finance department. You will be provided with full Grant Management as-a-Service assistance. We will address your grant management needs as well as provide you with grant position design, job description development support, new hire training and onboarding services so that you will be able to onboard and retain in-house talent.
Creating and Implementing Audit Finding Mitigation Roadmap
In a time when public trust and fiscal responsibility lie in the center of governance, it is increasingly critical to respond to funding agencies with corrective action plans and long-term compliance strategies to address identified audit findings. With our deep audit heritage, Cherry Bekaert will work with you side by side to tackle each audit finding and develop and implement corrective action plans to build a solid foundation for future clean audits.
Analyzing Organization Cost Structure and Achieving Full Cost Recovery
Are you subsidizing a grant? Agencies spend on average 30% to 40% of total program cost on indirect costs to support federally funded grant programs. However, rarely do they ever charge that to the program. We help identify which rate makes sense for your cost recovery, NICRA or federal de minimis. Subsiding should always be a conscious choice, not an unfortunate oversight.
